The Democrat, a name – and newspaper – with a lot of history

They took apart our sign on Monday. Turns out they had to replace the ballast for the fluorescent lights.

For a minute I thought we were taking it down.

I’d hate that.

This is the birth month of the Tallahassee Democrat. We published our first edition March 3, 1905. We are 109 years old. The only older business in Tallahassee is Capital City Bank, formed in 1895.

We were founded by John G. Collins, a Monticello native who had worked for several of the many 19th century newspapers in Tallahassee.

Most of those early newspapers had typical names for the era. Most put “Florida” in the first part of their name, then added titles such as Intelligencer, Advocate, Courier, Star, Sentinel, etc. One of the longest lasting was simply, “The Floridian.”

Collins gave his newspaper a distinctive name: The Weekly True Democrat. He explained:

“It will be our endeavor... to follow the true and tried doctrines of ‘Old Time Democracy’ of the Fathers,” Collins wrote in that first issue.

Collins owned the paper for only three years. Struck by influenza, he sold the paper to Milton Smith in 1908 (then lived another 11 years before dying at age 66).

But the name Collins chose for the newspaper lived on.

There were some tweaks along the way. Smith, a colorful entrepreneur and untiring civic booster, changed the name and frequency to the Daily Democrat in 1915. In 1925, we became the Tallahassee Daily Democrat. In 1929, we dropped “Tallahassee” in favor of “Daily Democrat.” In 1949, we dropped the “Daily,” restored “Tallahassee” and became the Tallahassee Democrat — as we have remained since.

The name has elicited some consternation over the years. You call someone in another state and say, “I’m with the Tallahassee Democrat,” and some will say “What?” I’ve had to explain 1,000 times our name has nothing to do with the Democratic Party. That it’s about old-time democracy.

The name has elicited mocking. The oh-so-clever have called us “The Demagogue.” Back in the days of segregation, some black readers called us “The Dixiecrat,” for our perceived Old South bent.

Of course, if you work here for a while, you don’t hear any implications. You get so used to saying, “Gerald Ensley, Tallahassee Democrat,” that it feels routine.

Still, the name infuriates some.

A longtime reader called last fall to insist we change the name. She said she’s a Democrat but feels “there’s no reason for a Republican to read a paper with that name.”

She said we must realize that’s the case because our website is “tallahassee.com,” without the Democrat.

Actually, Tallahassee.com was a bit of marketing genius — as it gave us the image as being of all Tallahassee. Which, indeed, we are. It’s also shorter and easier to spell than “tallahasseedemocrat.com.”

Why she was concerned whether Republicans read the paper, I’m not sure. Perhaps altruism. Or perhaps she had read about the Fauquier (Va.) Times Democrat, a small, suburban paper outside Washington D.C., dropping Democrat from its name in June 2013 because of concerns about readers’ perceptions.

Yet of all reasons people have given us for stopping their subscription, our name is rarely mentioned — even by those who accuse us of being flaming liberals. Most people recognize a newspaper’s name doesn’t dictate a newspaper’s content.

Because it doesn’t.

It is a common fallacy among those who don’t read newspapers very often — or very well — that newspapers slant the news. They read opinion pieces or editorials and somehow believe all stories in a newspaper are slanted toward one end of the spectrum (even though newspapers carry a variety of opinions on all sides).

It’s just not so. News stories are different than opinion pieces. Reporters investigate, interview, research. What they find is what they write. I can show you news story after news story and defy you to find the bias. What people really mean when they say stories are slanted is, “I don’t like the facts in that story.”

I can’t remember what I thought of the name Tallahassee Democrat the first time I heard it, 45 years ago. Maybe I thought it was humorous or quaint or even odd. But I knew it was just a newspaper name — in an industry with naming conventions all its own (see also: Intelligencer, Advocate, Sentinel, etc.). I didn’t assume it made a political statement.

I certainly love the name now. It’s distinctive. There are only a handful of newspapers in the nation with Democrat in their names (e.g. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock).

It’s also historic. The paper has been here 109 years; always we’ve been the Democrat. Generations have grown up knowing their hometown newspaper as the Democrat. It’s part of Tallahassee.

There’s no saying we won’t someday change the name. In today’s newspaper industry, everything is up for grabs.

But I hope we don’t. It’s the name of the place I’ve worked for 34 years. It’s a part of me.